Armando Peraza, the self-taught percussionist who introduced Afro-Cuban rhythms to the United States and performed with many jazz and rock luminaries, including Carlos Santana and pianist George Shearing, died on Monday in South San Francisco. He was 89.

The cause was complications from pneumonia, said his wife, Josephine Peraza.

Born in Havana, Mr. Peraza was orphaned at age 7 and grew up homeless, selling vegetables on the street and educating himself. He was a baseball player, a boxer and a dancer before achieving success as a bongo and conga musician, playing with Latin music greats Patato Valdes in his first band, Conjunto Kubavana, and then later with mambo king Pérez Prado in Mexico.

Mr. Peraza was known for his nimble, dazzling style. "You watch his hands and it looks like he's dancing," said John Santos, the revered San Francisco bandleader.

When Mr. Peraza followed his childhood friend, Mongo Santamaria, to New York in 1949, he seamlessly fell in with the city's vibrant big band scene. On his second day in the country he played with Charlie Parker.

He moved to San Francisco to work with jazz entertainer Slim Gaillard, who owned the Fillmore Street nightclub Bop City. Over six decades, the diminutive but demanding Mr. Peraza would work with Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Dexter Gordon, Dave Brubeck, Cal Tjader, Judy Garland, Eric Clapton, Linda Ronstadt, Frank Zappa, Aretha Franklin, Jaco Pastorius, Jimi Hendrix and Stan Kenton, among many others.

"He was a force of nature," said Arturo Riera, president of the board of the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival and blogger Mister Latin Jazz. "He didn't play the traditional way. A lot of his way of playing was Armando style. He invented languages."

Toured with Santana

Mr. Peraza brought Latin rhythms to the George Shearing Quintet for more than a dozen years at the height of that group's popularity. He played with Cal Tjader when the Latin percussionist cut his 1965 breakthrough hit "Soul Sauce." He also appeared anonymously on "Abraxas," the second album by Santana, the record that brought Latin rhythm to rock, and toured the world as a member of the Santana band through the 1970s and '80s before, at age 66, diabetes made traveling too difficult.

After 18 years of collaboration, Mr. Peraza's influence on Santana was indelible. The guitarist dedicated his 1988 greatest hits collection, "Viva Santana," to him.

On Monday, Santana dedicated a poem to Mr. Peraza that read in part:

"My greatest teacher/ mentor/role model/

Crossed over the other side tonight/ He is now light only ... no more in the body/

He is free from gravity and time/

Immortality is his playground/

Infinity is his domain."

Armando Peraza was born in Havana on May 30, 1924 (although there is no record of the official date of his birth). When he was 3, his father died of pneumonia. His mother died four years later from liver failure, leaving him orphaned and homeless.

"I never had a chance to learn everything," he told The Chronicle. "In the streets, nobody showed us nothing."

In his later years he took satisfaction seeing his influence spread. "We took Latin percussion in Harlem and it was all over the place," he told The Chronicle. "They play good, too. All over. Germany. Forget it. It's international now."

He lived in semi-retirement in San Mateo, managing his diabetes and devoting most of his time to his other passion: baseball, particularly the San Francisco Giants.

Mr. Peraza made just a few select live appearances. In 2006, he performed with the Santana band for three shows at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. In 2009, he played with Santos and Orestes Vilato at Yoshi's Oakland to celebrate his 85th birthday.

'Peraza days'

Three official "Armando Peraza Days" were declared by the city of San Francisco, and he was inducted into the Smithsonian Institution's Hall of Jazz Legends.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Peraza is survived by a daughter, Traci Williams of Fort Worth, Texas, and three grandchildren.

Memorial arrangements are pending.

"It's a challenge because Armando never went to funerals," said Riera. "When you talked to him about death, he would get in a boxer's stance and say he would sock death in the nose. So we're trying to think of a way to celebrate his life. We're thinking of a public space along the Fillmore and a mortuary that won't mind wheeling out his body to a party."